


2am

by charmtion



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, May/December Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:34:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27729601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmtion/pseuds/charmtion
Summary: ‘He works her, and she thinks of words: smaller and smaller words spinning up and up. Her bones feel like they are shaking; she feels tiny beneath his tongue. It is so good as to be almost unbearable, and he knows her body so well as to be able to draw her pleasure out, roll it thin. A knife, he is—so sharp it cuts cleanly, completely.’A whiskey-tipped evening, featuring silver fox Jon.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 26
Kudos: 132
Collections: summer rain





	2am

**Author's Note:**

> > written to happiness is a butterfly by lana del rey. 🦋

They met at a literary event held by her university. She was attracted to him because he did things that she considered exotic at the time. Once, he lit a cigarette in the bath and when the ash fell it made patterns in the water. The image has stayed with her; she doesn’t know why. Sometimes she imagines that he is sketching the same patterns on her skin when he touches her in bed.

She chose a city university because she wanted—somehow—to reclaim the anonymity denied to her by her countryside upbringing. Years later, it seems that desire has been spurned. He knows her better than anyone. He sees through her in a way no-one else ever has, ever cared to. What the village gossips would give to see half the secrets she stores beneath his skin.

It is Wednesday evening, and the same shadow is showing through the glass panel of the front-door as it always does midweek. He has a key, but courtesy makes him knock. His manners are what he calls half-inherited, half-informed—something to do with his father, the boundaries and privacies denied to his mother. He doesn’t talk about his parents much, and neither does she. They like it that way; it sustains the illusion that there is nothing much between them.

He leans a shoulder against the doorframe as she pats a little more lipstick onto her cupid’s bow. She feels his eyes on her; she does not look away from the mirror. It is another part of their illusion, their pretence—that he is not drinking her in, that she is not revelling in the easy, practised way he consumes her.

She tilts her head to the side once she has capped her lipstick, holds it in her right hand as she rustles a section of her hair with her left.

‘I wish you’d use that key,’ she says.

The shoulder against the doorframe scrapes a shrug. ‘I prefer to be let inside.’ 

‘Invited in?’ she says, deliberately—the way her pulse flutters at his choice of words. ‘Like a vampire. You’d play that part well, I suppose.’

‘I can’t imagine what you mean by that.’

She hears the smile in his voice a second before she turns away from the mirror and sees it: that half-lift of his lips beneath the silver-tipped shadow of his beard. He rolls his eyes, leans away from the doorframe. His fingers brush the small of her back as she moves past him toward the flight of stone steps. It is a fleeting touch. She feels it like an ember on her skin the entire taxi-ride.

He wants to hear about her day, listens intently as he always does when they sit down to dinner. It used to be a game she played. She would tell him every minute detail of her diary to see which bits he’d omit or forget: that brunch with Margaery a month ago, the sandwich shop she went to when she was downtown for an afternoon, the exact time and date of some mundane appointment. When he told her he’d been to _Toasty’s_ on her recommendation—a full two months after she had mentioned it—she knew the game was up.

‘Did you hear back from that magazine yet?’

Cool wine blooms across her tongue. ‘Not yet.’ She sets the glass down onto the tablecloth. ‘But the deadline isn’t until Friday, so.’

‘Early bird catches the worm.’

She annoys herself by laughing at his age-old idiom, takes another sip of wine. ‘If only that were true in publishing.’

It is the first poem she has submitted to a literary publication. She has written poetry all her life. Usually, she does not show it to anyone, not even him. He doesn’t touch the small pile of notebooks that builds beside her bed steadily throughout the year. Sometimes she wishes that he would. Run a fingertip down the cracked spine of one of them, let the ink-stained pages be kissed by his breath. Sometimes she thinks that she is a fool, half-drunk on the twee lines that consume her days. Other times she is a genius: an unrecognised one, teetering on the edge of something bigger—better.

‘I wish I hadn’t sent it,’ she says now. ‘It wasn’t my best.’

‘It was brilliant.’

Her eyes narrow. ‘How would you know? You’ve never seen it.’

‘You wrote it.’

Despite herself, she smiles. ‘And that’s enough, is it?’

‘Aye,’ he says. ‘That’s more than enough, Sansa.’

The syllables of her name drag across his tongue, drop lazily from his lips. His teeth glimmer white beneath the soft spotlights of the restaurant. Her own smile widens. There is a butterfly in her throat, fluttering from the hollow of it to swoop along her collarbone. She swallows, and the sensation settles a little lower. Heat blooms in her chest, her stomach.

She feels his eyes on her, knows that they are tracking the subtle changes to her face, her body. The tip of his index finger trails over the back of her hand; she nips at her lower lip to stop the sound that is threatening to storm past it.

His voice is a rumble somewhere at the edges of her awareness. ‘Too early for that yet, baby—we’ve got all night.’

‘I don’t know if I can wait, Jon.’

‘You’ll wait,’ he says softly. ‘You know it’ll be worth it if you do.’

Her lashes sweep up from her cheeks. He is leaning back a little in his chair, his fingertip continuing its idle path across her knuckles.

Sansa stretches her fingers out as his touch feathers over her skin, the glints of jewellery that he bought for her last Christmas. The loose silver bracelet with its single, elegant moonstone; the midi-ring that sits snugly above the first joint of her middle finger—these gifts that she treasures more than she will ever let him know.

‘Is that a promise?’

Jon smiles again at the indifference she works hard to impart into her tone. ‘Aye.’ He rasps his thumb up over that little silver ring now. ‘A promise.’

‘Alright,’ she says. ‘I’ll wait.’

They order another bottle of wine. He wants sharp, she wants sweet—and signals the waiter before he can argue. It fizzes into their glasses like champagne. A hint of orange blossom, honeysuckle. She smiles as it slips down her throat; he takes a sip, wrinkles his nose. Swallows with a little grimace. Then he swoops a look at her from beneath his lashes, and she knows the performance is complete.

That glint of humour stays in his eyes as he talks a bit about his work. She listens intently—a screenplay that won’t shape up, a difficult director, an impossible actor—and loses her sense of time and place, of the murmur and clatter that surrounds them.

She finds him fascinating; the strength of that feeling sometimes feels overwhelming. Every time they talk like this, it is as though she relearns that fascination, as though it separates and multiplies: cell-like, a bloom of Jon that knits itself into the framework of her body, her blood, her bones.

He puts his glass down after another comic-wince, twitches an eyebrow up. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m boring myself.’

‘No,’ she says softly. ‘You’re good at what you do.’ Tilts her head to the side, thumb to her chin. ‘I like to hear you talk about it.’

A little hum echoes up from his chest; her throat tightens at the timbre of it. They look at each other across the off-white tablecloth, the rumpled napkins, untouched breadbasket. That butterfly finds its way into her belly now, stirs wingbeat against its edges.

‘This wine is awful,’ he says after a moment. ‘Let’s go and get a proper drink.’

He turns his head as he reaches for the wallet in the breast-pocket of his jacket. The spotlights catch at the silver in his hair. She wants to follow a single strand with her fingertip, wind an obsidian ring around her thumb. The profile of him, the beauty of the lines that make his body. She looks at him and her heart aches. She thinks of the words she would write about him if she ever let herself commit such soundless poems to paper.

The bar they go to is at the end of the strip, a soulful blot amidst all the glitz and chintzy glamour. A moment within its dark red walls, and something falls away between them. They order cheap wine, house whiskey. She catches an ice-cube between her teeth, revels in the look he gives her as she slips her tongue around it and draws it into her mouth. There is hunger in his eyes now as well as humour. She sucks it till it melts, then leans forward.

‘Kiss me,’ she says—and he does.

Her tongue is cool; he groans when it touches his own. He puts his hand at the base of her throat, his thumb pressing against the side of her neck, its tip propped up beneath her jawbone. Gently, his palm bears down. The breath hitches halfway to her lungs. She moans into his mouth: a dim, low sound that he swallows almost instantly.

‘Fuck,’ he whispers. ‘Let me take you home.’

His thumb grazes her chin as she shakes her head, smiles mockingly. ‘Too early for that, baby.’

‘I can’t wait.’

‘You promised.’

There is a glitter of something in his eyes that tells her he would make this booth a bedroom in a heartbeat if she wanted it. That he would put her onto the table and put his palms onto her thighs, his mouth between them—and she would let him. She would open herself to him amidst the noise and the chaos, she would close her eyes to anything else but him, safe in the knowing that he would kill any man who dared look at her, dared threaten the sanctity of her bliss.

She is a fool, a genius—she is in love, and she will never admit it.

‘Aye,’ he says huskily. ‘I did.’

Their kiss untangles slowly. He nips her thumb as she rubs the faint press of lipstick from his mouth, strokes smooth the inky beard: his chin, his cheek. They drink more whiskey, spin a turn or two across the sticky multicoloured squares, shouting at each other above the din of the music. The air turns damp, hot. Her mouth finds his again; she tastes liquor, lipstick. His hand smooths down her back, her hips rock forward to seek his body, and they know the game is up.

‘Take me home,’ she breathes—and he does.

All the taxis are taken. He jokes about stealing a skateboard from the local drifters out late, spinning the tarmac the whole way home. She is content to walk—his fingers are woven between her own, after all—but she lets him carry her heels half a mile out from the strip. The concrete is smooth and cool against her soles. She thinks of the daisies in his garden, their clean, white petals; somehow, the tides of traffic begin to smell a little sweeter.

By the time they make it back to her apartment the oven-clock is flashing 2am. Sansa looks at the glow of red amidst the kitchen’s gloom. Behind her, Jon is pulling the front-door shut. She hears the chain slide across; she feels his hands settle on her hips a moment later. He spins her between his palms, and she falls against his chest like she did when they were dancing.

This time, she lets his hand slide beneath the silky slip of her dress. She hums against his throat at the noise he makes when he finds her bare beneath it, slippery.

He cups her in his palm. ‘You’ll kill me one day.’

‘Yes,’ she whispers as he parts her with his thumb, rolls. ‘Oh, yes.’

She is lax enough against the arm he has around her waist that he is able to manoeuvre her exactly how he wants to—gently, easily. The way her body tips toward the kitchen table, the way her back seems desperate to meet the rough grain of it. Her thighs bow wide before he has even moved to touch them; the silk of her dress slips up to pool around her navel. He gathers a fistful of it, pushes it up between her breasts as he dips his lips to taste the soft stretch of her belly.

‘What you said earlier,’ he says into her skin. ‘About my work—you’re very sweet.’

Her breath trembles in her throat. ‘You don’t like sweet things.’

‘Not Moscato, no.’

‘But me?’

‘Yes,’ he says into the swell of her thigh. ‘You.’

He works her, and she thinks of words: smaller and smaller words spinning up and up. Needle-point letters and slow blooms of cursive. Her bones feel like they are shaking; she feels tiny beneath his tongue. It is so good as to be almost unbearable, and he knows her body so well as to be able to draw her pleasure out, roll it thin. A knife, he is—so sharp it cuts cleanly, completely.

‘Jon,’ she gasps. ‘Oh, I love that. I love it—don’t stop.’

When she comes, she forgets for a moment where they are. They could be in his house, sitting white and angular amidst the starry hills. They could be in their booth at the red-walled bar. They could be in the restaurant they ate at earlier, her fingernails leaving rents in the tablecloth. There could be a thousand people in this room, there could be ten, a hundred—it wouldn’t matter. There is no-one else. There is only him.

‘Good girl,’ he whispers as the muscles in her thighs unknot. ‘Mm—that’s it.’

What was once exotic is second-nature to her now: peaceful, familiar. There is comfort in the faint scent of cigarette smoke that clings to his old leather jacket. There is safety in the way he speaks his mind, in his moods, his monotone wardrobe—his mouth between her thighs, the murmured sounds he makes against her as he gentles her down.

A shiver settles on her skin. When she reaches to find his chin, her wrist grazes across her clit; she shudders at the ache that is left—deep, sweet like an day-old bruise—and whimpers as he kisses it once, softly, before following the pull of her fingers. She rolls her head to meet his lips, puts her hand in the curls that have tumbled free of his bun. His cock slides against her belly as his fingers find where his tongue has just left. He teases her gently and she whimpers again into his kiss.

‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘Tell me, Sansa.’

Their teeth click as she tips back her head, shifts her hips. ‘Inside,’ she whispers. ‘Oh, please. I want you inside me.’

‘Fuck.’ There is grit in his voice, gravel. ‘Again—tell me.’

‘Come inside,’ she breathes. ‘Please, Jon. I need you inside me.’

He eases into her, settles there inside her, and she thinks suddenly that he doesn’t need to touch the cracked spine of a notebook, breathe on an ink-stained page—he knows her heart already. She is bare to him, and he to her.

The silver in his hair glints with the bracelet on her wrist, the little ring on her finger that he brushes now with his lips. There is something in his eyes that looks like a heartbeat; but they will not give a name to it, a label—not yet.

‘Like that,’ she says as he moves. ‘That feels good. Jon, that feels so good.’

In bed later he sketches patterns on her skin. She is on her side, sleepy with the rhythm of his breathing against her back. Cotton clouds them; the sky is growing paler at the window. She turns her cheek toward the mattress, presses a kiss to his forearm.

‘Maybe I’ll write you a poem one day,’ she says.

She feels his smile like an ember on her skin. ‘Write me a script,’ he says. ‘I’ll make a beautiful film for you.’

‘A script might take me a while.’

‘I’ve got time,’ he whispers. ‘I can wait.’

Their fingers twine together beneath the sheets, rest loosely over her hip. His smile lingers on her skin, and hers sits like sunlight on her cheeks. That butterfly finds its way between her ribs again, flutters freely in her blood.

She is a fool, a genius—she is in love, and she will admit it, one day.

* * *

**n.b.** I envisage this being before _with the daisies_ ♡ love charm x


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